Day 29:
Stationary at Hyatt Tamaya Resort, New Mexico
Total Miles: 3,561
I had scheduled a "free day" today, as just go-go-going every day on a road trip can really get tiresome. I figured I'd also need to do some cleaning and organization.
I'm staying at a real nice Hyatt property, the Tamaya Resort and Spa. I wanted to stay here last year, but unfortunately it was closed due to COVID. Each state was handling COVID differently, some political leadership focused on different things than other states. New Mexico had been very stringent, closing down businesses with extra prohibitions, and so the Tamaya Resort wasn't available last year.
Good to try it out this year, since they've reopened. Fancy place. The room was nice, albeit not quite as ritzy as I thought it might be. Good view in the bottom pic, though--they upgraded me to a nice mountain view, and that's looking from the balcony.
Laundry part of traveling, lol!
Unfortunately, this lady jumped in front of me, as I was waiting for a handicapped parking spot. Then even went so far as to throw a fake handicapped placard in her windshield, that was expired.
A cop just happened to see this, and intervened. Sometimes, I guess karma just does grab people like that! Lol.
I'll use the free day today to talk about some various car stuff, products and BMW design.
It's a small thing, but I bought this car trashcan for this trip. Turned out
awesome. Rigid but collapsable. Got that nice pass-through lid, that keeps it looking and smelling nice. Other features, and perhaps best of all, fits PERFECT right behind the center armrest. Love it.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Since I put the BMW all weather floor liners in my X7, I wanted to try something different in the X5. In Alaska weather, we really have to put something protective on the floors. These 3D MAXpider floor mats had some good reviews here on Bimmerpost.
I'm not a fan, though. These mats do repel water and mud well, and easily rinse off when washing the car. But they're lighter than the BMW OEM mats, which are chunky rubber. These are a formed composite material. So they slide, with a little wiggle, on the floor, such as when I push hard on the dead pedal to properly stabilize during hard braking.
I do like how it covers the dead pedal, which the BMW OEM mats don't do.
I'm going to keep my BMW OEM liners in my X7, which work great. I think these mats will do okay for the X5 as a secondary family car.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I had shown this trunk liner, when first picking up the new car, freshly protected from Extreme Colors. At the time, it had several folds from coming out of shipping.
Nice and flat now, after a few weeks in the car. It's still a little lightweight, like the 3D MAXpider floor mats. It also wiggles a little bit, unless there's cargo set on top of it.
But I like the edge lip, to contain moisture and spills. I like that it forms into the side pockets of the trunk. And, if desired, the trunk tie-down rings are still accessible.
So, not the best, but for being in the trunk, out of sight, it does its job and works just fine. Especially for the nice price.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I used this powered cooler on my last X7 PCD road trip. It's ok, but not great. The lid latch is a little sticky to open. I haven't used the heat function, but the cooling function is mediocre. At least it cools my drinks and other items somewhat. But I prefer ice-cold drinks.
So if I had it to do over again, I would have bought a slightly smaller and more powerful cooler that performed better. I thought about buying a new one for this road trip, but decided to save some money and reuse this one. It was a little bulky on the flight to Greenville for the PCD, but worked out ok.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I have this same center console organizer in my X7, and it works great. So I bought it again for the X5. (same console fits G05/G06/G07)
Very nice. Breaks up your big cavernous center console into storage areas. Can put stuff below the storage piece. A couple of compartment areas, for whatever you want, including a coin holder, which is great for this road trip, holding lots of quarters in case I hit tolls.
It also has a cutout for accessing the console USB-C port. So this is where I've attached my USB hard drives, holding my music files.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
On that note, I wanted to talk a bit about audio.
I got the Bowers & Wilkins audio system on my X7 last year, for my car. This time, since the X5 is a secondary family car, I wanted to go one step down, with Harman Kardon. However, with the decontenting that's going on with BMW and everybody else, nothing was available for this X5 40i beyond the base audio system.
I'll talk about decontenting a lot more in upcoming travel days. I was a little disappointed when ordering. If it had been my own X7, I wouldn't have done it, but accepted it for the X5.
At first listen, the base audio really didn't sound good. But after applying the basic audio controls "smile" by raising the bass and treble, the sound started to come alive.
The B&W audio really shone when I put high resolution audio files through it, streamed from USB hard drives. So I connected my USB music drives to the X5, and gave it a listen.
My #1 go-to demo music song is Dire Straits "Money for Nothing" from their Brothers in Arms 25th Anniversary album. Giving it a listen, I was actually pleasantly surprised with the X5 base audio system. The opening audio swirl had some definition. Sting's "I want my MTV" came through pretty clear, with the snare drum taps, and the building audio scream.
For anyone that uses a high-res audio copy of this song, I dare you not to play air guitar when Mark Knopfler breaks in on his opening riff. This came through well on the system at high volume, and even the bass guitar and bass drum thumps were strong.
The X7 B&W audio seems made for the music of the band Disturbed. Just rocks it out. This base system does a worthwhile job representing, of similarly demanding music, but isn't quite as solid. I'll continue to test out other audio files throughout the rest of the drive.
I've been doing some critical listening in the car the last 3,500 miles, testing out various audio and songs. Satellite/terrestrial radio and bluetooth are okay. But, of course, high-res audio from USB drives are much cleaner.
The base audio system actually isn't bad, with the basic bass/treble additions. It's pretty clear and strong. I think it could use additional amplification, and some speaker upgrades. But it's better than I expected.
A little about map updates. For a year and a half, my X7 didn't get any map updates, and stayed on a 2020 map file. After some discussion with my local dealer, (BMW of Anchorage, again, service has been fantastic even though I had big problems with sales) they found buried in non-user-accessible settings, that my car was set to the central region.
Service adjusted it to Canada/Alaska, and not only did my master nav file update, but I also got the local Alaska map detail file.
Right now, my X5 doesn't have a map detail file. I wonder if it might be a region setting thing again. So I looked in my BMWUSA garage. Strange--I can see and adjust my region on my X7 there. But my X5 doesn't have anything about map updates or regions. See screenshots above.
I'm going to futz with this some over the rest of the drive, see if a map update or detail file shows up. If anyone has further insight, I'm all ears.
Ugh... those are some ugly water spots from the car wash yesterday. Since I have time, had to go take care of that. Bought some microfiber towels from Walmart. Found a local manual car wash.
Dammit... this one ALSO had nothing come out of the hose when I put it to presoak. The wash spray was nice and strong this time, though, with soap, so I was actually able to get the bugs and such.
When I went to do the final "spotless rinse", though, AGAIN, nothing came out of the hose. Geez, what is with these car washes?
It started to rain, at the end of my car wash, though, so it kinda became a moot point.
Gave it a good rinse, and let's hope for no water spots tomorrow!
Finished up the day with something cool, having
r33_RGSport code my X5.
Last year, I had
r33_RGSport Ben code my X7 when I got to southern California on that last PCD road trip. He's also remotely re-coded my X7 a couple times, as every time BMW pushes an Over The Air (OTA) update, it blanks out coding. (side note: my X7 hasn't had an OTA update for over a year--I'll be addressing that after I get back to Alaska)
So I gave it a few weeks to get familiar with my X5, and then today had Ben code it as well. It was a little funny, sitting in the hotel parking lot, stretching for a hotel Wifi connection, but tethering to my phone (or X5 hotspot) would have worked too. Laptop on the floor there in the picture, with USB network cable connected to the X5 OBD port under the dash. Having my car coded in a hotel parking lot, thousands of miles away from home, by a guy a few thousand miles away in a different direction over the internet. Modern technology, huh?
Stayed away from anything deep that would affect X5 engine operation or such. But coding can give some valuable feature additions.
And note, to make sure I didn't screw anything up, I went to Ben as an expert that knows exactly what he's doing with coding. I wasn't going to brick my car, or chance voiding warranty!
To me, this is the #1 thing to code. Headlight Matrix Anti-Dazzle. (note: BMW makes it confusing, but this is different from the No-Dazzle that might be listed on your car invoice)
My X5 has the basic LED headlights, not laser. But I'll still get function from the Anti-Dazzle Matrixing. For a guy like me, that lives in a rural area, that has extra darkness in the winter, and animals like moose around, Anti-Dazzle gives
HUGE benefits. It's very functional.
I really see it as a safety feature. Thank goodness, after many years, the NHTSA has finally approved anti-dazzle matrix technology for the USA, which has been present in USA BMW vehicle hardware, but switched off. Unknown at this point how BMW will implement this technology moving forward, but for all current owners, we have to code this back on.
Just another example of useful coding. And I don't know why BMW doesn't have this enabled by defult for everyone. It's not a safety danger. You can code so that seat heating and/or ventilation automatically turns on for each seat, when the ambient temperature reaches a selectable threshold.
At first, with my X7, I wasn't sure if I wanted this feature, as, for example, I didn't want the seat heating kicking on in a back seat on every cold day, with nobody sitting there. But the extra cool thing is, this feature doesn't even kick on, if there's nobody sitting in the seat. The car can tell if each seat is occupied or not.
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Other things can be coded, too. I coded so that i can close the tailgate from the keyfob, which for me is very useful, as it's getting increasingly difficult for me to reach all the way up to the close button on the trunk lid when it's open.
Another popular feature people like to code is to disable Auto Stop/Start. This 2022 X5 40i has no AS/S disable button. It also has a mild hybrid 48V system.
I'm generally not a fan of AS/S. It causes problems on my X7, like when I'm slowing to a stop in a parking spot, and AS/S prematurely kicks in, stopping me short. If I try to inch foward, the car will restart, with a bigger lurch forward than is needed. Bah.
However, with the 48V mild hybrid system, I'm finding AS/S in the X5 to be a bit better. I'm still getting a few occassions, where AS/S will kick in early as I'm slowing to a stop in a parking spot. But it's improved. And, when AS/S stops at a stoplight, the 48V electric motor helps smooth the restart. So for now, I left AS/S enabled.
Okay, gotta get to bed early. Tomorrow's gonna be my biggest drive of the whole trip.